One Misstep: The 1500ft Fall

A young man seeks fulfilment in the majesty of the great outdoors. But one day, all alone in the Rockies, Ryan Montoya gets into serious trouble. Near the summit of a formidable peak, one wrong move sees him slip and tumble down the mountain. From this dizzying height, how long will it be before he grinds to a halt? And how can he possibly survive such a punishing fall? A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Edward White | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Our sister podcast Short History Of… has a new book! Pre-order your copy of A Short History of Ancient Rome now at noiser.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:03John Hopkins?

  It's March the 5th, 2017. Late morning, 14,000 feet up on Pyramid Peak in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

• 1:13John Hopkins?

  A strong wind swirls around the west face, scattering snow across the rocks.

• 1:19John Hopkins?

  Distant, dark clouds inch ever closer. A storm is on its way.

• 1:26John Hopkins?

  Mountain goats are often seen traversing this pristine wilderness. Bald eagles glide overhead, but little else can exist up here.

• 1:37John Hopkins?

  And yet, this morning, there is another sign of life.

• 1:41John Hopkins?

  An intrepid soul is negotiating the steep slopes of Pyramid Peak. This is Ryan Montoya, an avid climber, all alone, grappling with the rocks, hauling himself upwards.

• 1:55John Hopkins?

  Snow crumbles and crunches under the 23-year-old's feet as he picks his way across the northwest ridge.

• 2:02John Hopkins?

  He looks up.

• 2:04John Hopkins?

  There it is. The summit. A giant, austere arrowhead aimed at the heavens, now tantalizingly close after hours of strenuous solo ascent.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  I can see the summit at this point. It wasn't very far. I feel like it was only 50, 100 feet above me, maybe at the most. And the weather's picking up still, so I definitely want to get up there, tag the summit, and get down as soon as possible.

• 2:30John Hopkins?

  Above is a wall of sharp, jutting icy rocks. An inviting puzzle he has to complete. To Ryan, this is all virgin territory. He's never climbed Pyramid Peak before. Every challenge it throws at him, he's having to solve in real time.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  I wasn't feeling 100% physically. I was definitely a little tired from the climb. And so I don't know that I was necessarily picking my footing very carefully as I made my way up towards the summit.

• 3:04John Hopkins?

  He's on his own up here. Should anything go wrong, there's no help at hand. And with a brutal storm closing in, even the tiniest error could be fatal. Ryan picks a route to the summit, focuses, and climbs on. Tired limbs strain and scramble over ice and rock. A dizzying drop lies below. A great void filled with dancing snowflakes and whistling wind. And then it happens.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  I must have misstepped, maybe a rock, crumbled and fell, but it happened so fast.

• 3:49John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, the rocks beneath him give way. He loses his footing, and Ryan tumbles off the edge of the world. He plummets through the air, his body smashing over and over against the boulders. From just one misplaced step, he is now in freefall, hurtling towards the ground from a height of 14,000 feet.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  And I remember just thinking, oh, okay, now I'm dead.

• 4:25John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 4:47John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet Ryan Montoya. A young man seeking spiritual fulfillment in the majesty of the great outdoors, Ryan is driven to immersing himself in the most punishing conditions.

• 5:00John Hopkins?

  And in 2017, he embraces a particularly ambitious challenge: ascending a formidable peak in the Rocky Mountains all by himself. It's the kind of test he relishes. Yet, when one false step sends him tumbling down the mountain, it seems he's pushed himself too far. From thousands of feet up, how far will he fall? And how can he possibly survive such a massive drop?

• 5:27Speaker 03

  It all happened very quickly. I, one moment, could see the summit. The next thing I remember is bouncing between some rocks. The pain was just so intense and consuming that I thought there was no way I was gonna survive.

• 5:41John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 6:12John Hopkins?

  It's 3 a.m. on Sunday, March 5, 2017. Daylight is yet to trouble the banks of Crater Lake, Colorado. When the sun is up, this is a stunningly beautiful spot. The nearby mountains fix their images on the still surface of the water. But at this pre-dawn hour, darkness covers the landscape. Still, so massive and imposing is the surrounding range that even at night, the mountains are visible, casting giant silhouettes against the starry sky.

• 6:46John Hopkins?

  One of those mountains is Pyramid Peak, today's destination for 23-year-old Ryan Montoya.

• 6:54John Hopkins?

  Ryan emerges from his shelter, a little cave he dug into the snow the evening before. No stranger to the privations of outdoor living, by his standards, it's a snug little haven, perfect preparation for what's awaiting him. He stretches and rubs his eyes, taking in Pyramid Peak's immense shape, nebulous and sinister in the blackness. He packs away his sleeping bag and other equipment, ready to begin his solo climb to the top of the 14,000-foot mountain in front of him.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  It's always hard to wake up early in the morning for an objective, and it's even worse in winter time because it's so dang cold out.

• 7:38John Hopkins?

  Ryan shudders and shakes his limbs, attempting to get the blood flowing. It's gonna be tough out there, but that's part of the point.

• 7:48John Hopkins?

  Embracing physical and mental challenges has always been central to Ryan's connection with the natural world. Growing up in California, he grew to love the wilderness during family trips to Yosemite National Park. It was here he tried outdoor rock climbing for the first time, and was instantly hooked.

• 8:07John Hopkins?

  As a teenager, the outdoor life became a crucial part of his social life, and it instilled skills and instincts that would come to his aid several years later.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  We would set up these kind of mock survival nights, where we tried to take as little as possible out into the woods in various conditions. Sometimes there'd be snow on the ground, sometimes it would just be rainy. Often, we would forego the basic necessities like sleeping bags or any sort of shelter and proceed to regularly have a terrible night and not really sleep very much. I think those nights, while it was all play and practice, that they actually taught me a thing or two about spending a miserable night in the outdoors.

• 8:54John Hopkins?

  As a young man, climbing in the vastness of the Californian wilderness also allowed Ryan to connect with something larger than himself at a time of personal crisis.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  I was Christian, but sometime my sophomore year, I had a falling out with my faith. And so that really exacerbated those teenage years, all those stresses, all those anxieties and fears about the future. And that actually coincided pretty much exactly with when I started picking up climbing in the outdoors.

• 9:24John Hopkins?

  In more ways than one, climbing became a rock in his life.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  You have this challenge, this thing you're afraid of. You go out, you practice, you attempt, you fail, and eventually you succeed and you have that triumph. And that's very addicting, especially for somebody who is in their greater life, very afraid and very anxious. So I think it provided that spiritual experience I was looking for.

• 9:54John Hopkins?

  When he graduated high school, Ryan entered the University of Colorado, an institution he chose because of the abundant opportunities for outdoor pursuits. Now, in March 2017, he's in his fifth and final year, and climbing is still a source of spiritual sustenance, perhaps more than ever.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  I initially had a lot of trouble building community. I had left a lot of really close friends in California. All my family was in California. And I had started to experiment with solo climbing and solo mountaineering. I didn't have to rely on anyone. I didn't need solid partners. I found in solo climbing, the depth in my life that I think I was kind of craving. I would spend my time researching routes, dreaming about routes.

• 10:41John Hopkins?

  At the top of his list is Pyramid Peak. It's known as a Fortina, one of 96 mountains in the United States at an elevation of more than 14,000 feet.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  I really wanted to push my winter mountaineering because that was like the true solo style climbing you can do in Colorado. I feel like anything else you do in Colorado, you're almost guaranteed to have other people around. But solo forkeenering or solo mountain climbing, that's kind of the one time in Colorado you might find yourself completely alone on a mountain. And Pyramid Peak was one amongst many solo winter climbs that I wanted to do.

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• 12:33John Hopkins?

  Long before sunrise on March the 5th, Ryan stands by the banks of Crater Lake. The nocturnal sounds of the Colorado backcountry puncture the quiet.

• 12:45John Hopkins?

  In the darkness, he breathes in the crisp morning air.

• 12:49John Hopkins?

  With weather forecasts indicating that heavy snow and high winds will swamp Pyramid Peak later that evening, Ryan's plan is to make it up and down the mountain before nightfall.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  I wanted to make sure I was up and off the mountain very early to not get caught in that storm. I felt good physically, but there's always a whole slew of emotions that go through you. I definitely struggled with excitement, fears, and everything in between.

• 13:20John Hopkins?

  As he prepares to embark, he checks his equipment. Nobody can accuse him of packing light. Among his plentiful kit, he has a helmet, a shovel, two axes, a stove, a small supply of food, and a bivvy sack, a waterproof cover for a sleeping bag that can double as a makeshift shelter.

• 13:40John Hopkins?

  He's also brought skis.

• 13:43John Hopkins?

  Setting off, it's on these that he completes the first leg of his journey, uphill through a dense snow field.

• 13:50John Hopkins?

  In the dim light, he makes steady progress, the vast sheet of white in front of him illuminated by the headlamp on his helmet. All around is the unmistakable evidence of a recent avalanche, great chunks of snow and scattered piles of mountain debris.

• 14:07John Hopkins?

  It's a reminder of the dangers he's entering into, all of them heightened by being on his own.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  I was aware of the risk I was taking, and I was okay with it. I was in a strange headspace because I think the rest of my life was feeling empty. That level of risk I was taking in the mountains felt acceptable to me.

• 14:35John Hopkins?

  Before long, the soft snow thins out and the terrain becomes rocky. It's time to ascend on foot.

• 14:44John Hopkins?

  Ryan removes his skis and stows them in the snow, ready for when he returns later in the day.

• 14:52John Hopkins?

  Already thousands of feet above sea level, he starts to climb his way up the west side of Pyramid Peak.

• 15:00John Hopkins?

  It's daytime, the sun is up, though it doesn't seem like it. The gray sky is thick with clouds. A stiff, cold wind pinches at Ryan's face.

• 15:11John Hopkins?

  The mountain is steep, the rocks disconcertingly crumbly. As he's never climbed the peak before, Ryan has little prior knowledge to draw upon. He's discovering possible routes as he goes.

• 15:25John Hopkins?

  It's a test of a climber's technical skills, the kind of test he embraces.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  The Rocky Mountains, they're named that way for a reason. However, not all of the rock is created equal. The main challenge of Pyramid Peak is the rock quality. It's extremely loose, blocky. So the main objective hazards are dealing with that rock quality as you're scrambling, the route finding, so you don't get onto harder terrain, and then this avalanche hazard.

• 15:56John Hopkins?

  After traversing a snowfield, he comes to a cliff band. To get through this, he has to pick his way through some small gullies.

• 16:06John Hopkins?

  Crampons and axes crack and bite into icy surfaces. Each strike tested for security before moving on.

• 16:15John Hopkins?

  It calls for all Ryan's reserves of skill and perseverance.

• 16:20John Hopkins?

  For half an hour, he probes various possible routes, trying to pick out the best path.

• 16:26John Hopkins?

  Time is draining away, as is his energy.

• 16:31John Hopkins?

  With one eye on the approaching weather, perhaps at this stage it's wise to admit defeat and turn back.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  That was really my decision point. I already wasted some time. The weather's brewing, snow is falling, and I don't want to be up there when it gets really bad and the winds increase.

• 16:51John Hopkins?

  But perhaps he still has time. He's so close.

• 16:56John Hopkins?

  With a deep breath, he makes his decision. If he moves quickly, he can still make it. He plows on. The summit awaits.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  It was kind of an emotional decision to keep going. Stubbornness, I guess, prevailed. I don't necessarily think I made the wrong decision to keep going, but it was, at that point, just kind of a personal decision to press on through.

• 17:24John Hopkins?

  The higher he climbs, the harder the wind bites and the heavier the snow falls.

• 17:31John Hopkins?

  His hands and feet seek purchase on the snow-covered rocks. His arms pull, his legs push, slowly climbing up foot after foot of crumbling rock face.

• 17:42John Hopkins?

  In these conditions and without a partner, every inch further up the mountain puts a demand on his strength, agility, and concentration.

• 17:51John Hopkins?

  Now, eight hours after he set out, Ryan finds himself a stone's throw from his destination. Above him, perhaps no more than 50 feet up, is the summit. He needs one final effort.

• 18:07John Hopkins?

  Untethered by any ropes, he works his way up, the rocks still loose beneath his feet.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  At this point, I'm far from celebrating because I'm still going to go down the whole mountain, and that tends to be the dangerous part of any mountain that you climb. So I am not celebrating, although I'm happy to have at least the most physically demanding part be over soon.

• 18:32John Hopkins?

  Ryan's head tilts and turns, scubbing out his options. He positions himself this way and that on the rocks, preparing to conquer this one final obstacle.

• 18:43John Hopkins?

  Then the unthinkable happens.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  This part of the story is frustratingly unclear because I have a poor memory of what happened. I must have misstepped, maybe on some snow. Maybe it was like overhanging, like a little cornice between some rocks. Lost my footing, maybe a rock crumbled and fell, or just a trip.

• 19:12John Hopkins?

  Whatever the details, one thing is certain. The solid rock beneath Ryan's feet vanishes. And he drops like a stone.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  I don't have any visual memories of the fall. It's all feeling and sound because things were moving much too quickly. The next thing I remember is bouncing between some rocks.

• 19:42John Hopkins?

  Again and again, he crashes into the steep mountain slope.

• 19:47John Hopkins?

  Punctuating the collisions are disorientating moments of flight as his body flails limply through the air.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  I was pinwheeling, tumbling through the snow. I could just feel that sensation of wind hitting the snow. No pain at this point. I could hear myself yelling and screaming. And I lost count how many times I went over like a cliff. One moment I'd be tumbling in the snow. And the next thing I knew was kind of dead, silent. And all I could hear or feel was the wind picking up as I was falling. And then I would hit the snow again and continue on.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  And I remember just thinking, oh, okay.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Now I'm dead.

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• 21:14Speaker 01

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• 21:49John Hopkins?

  For what feels like minutes, Ryan falls and falls. The experience is so extraordinary, it's impossible to make rational sense of it all.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  It all happened so fast, and it was just the out-of-body experience where I was just sort of an observer, taking note of what was happening.

• 22:11John Hopkins?

  At some point, it becomes apparent that Ryan is no longer spinning over ridges and hurtling into rocks. Instead, he is sliding on what must be a snow field. Instinctively, he thrusts his arms out and digs them into the icy cold ground. At length, he comes to a halt, face down in the snow.

• 22:35John Hopkins?

  The chaos is over. For a moment, there is nothing but silence.

• 22:44John Hopkins?

  Ryan has fallen at least fifteen hundred feet, maybe more. That's the height of the Empire State Building. How has he survived? It seems impossible.

• 22:58John Hopkins?

  Due to the recent weather, the mountain rocks are coated in heavy snowfall. Perhaps that helped to cushion the blows as he clattered his way down.

• 23:07John Hopkins?

  Whatever the case, the fact that he is still here is miraculous.

• 23:13John Hopkins?

  In the stillness, Ryan lies on his belly, takes several deep breaths, and gathers himself.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  I looked up, and I could not make sense of what I had fallen down.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Then the pain hit, and it was just so intense and consuming.

• 23:36John Hopkins?

  The agony radiates from his left elbow.

• 23:40John Hopkins?

  He rolls over, sits up, and examines his arm. It's jutting out at a bizarre, unnatural angle.

• 23:49John Hopkins?

  The elbow is clearly dislocated.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  I hadn't taken a medical course. I didn't know what to do in a situation like that, but just kind of instinctually, I grabbed my arm and started moving it just sort of in desperation and pop, just went right back into place. The relief was instantaneous.

• 24:10John Hopkins?

  But no sooner is the elbow back in place than another excruciating pain hits him.

• 24:17John Hopkins?

  This time it's coming from the area around his right hip. Ryan doesn't know it yet, but he's fractured his pelvis in three places.

• 24:25John Hopkins?

  He quickly scans himself for evidence of other damage. He can't find anything. The only sign of an open wound is a small amount of blood in his mouth caused by biting the inside of his cheek.

• 24:38John Hopkins?

  Considering the height from which he's fallen, it's mind boggling that he's not been more seriously injured.

• 24:45John Hopkins?

  Ryan puts his hand to his helmet, which now bears a huge dent, graphic evidence of how close he came to a sudden end.

• 24:55John Hopkins?

  Other items of his kit have taken a hit too, including his phone. When he retrieves it from his pocket, he sees the screen is smashed. Any chance he had of reaching out to civilization is definitively gone.

• 25:10John Hopkins?

  Just like his ascent, he'll have to get out of this all by himself.

• 25:15John Hopkins?

  With effort, he pushes himself up. Slowly, he attempts to stand and collapses under the pain in his pelvis.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  At that point, I was kind of forced to stop and really take inventory and see where I was, what was going on. It was cold, it was windy. I thought it was incredible that I had survived the fall, but now I have to sit there and, you know, die of exposure. I thought there was no way I was gonna survive.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  I just remember yelling out in anger. The anger I felt in that moment was, I think, mostly directed at myself for this thing that I committed myself to. It was almost like a rehash of when I had my falling out with my faith, where all of a sudden I realized, oh, this thing I had committed myself to suddenly felt hollow, all in one instant.

• 26:18John Hopkins?

  His search for meaning in solo mountaineering has led Ryan here, battered, broken, and alone in the frozen wilderness beneath a gathering storm.

• 26:31John Hopkins?

  Faced with a very real prospect of death, his solitary spiritual quest is put into stark relief.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  I'm thinking about family. I'm thinking about my friends, wondering how they're going to react to all of this. At that point, sitting on the side of the mountain, the floor kind of dropped out of all of solo mountaineering activity, and I just realized how empty and wasteful it was.

• 27:03John Hopkins?

  But if he's to make a fist of surviving, there's no time for self-recrimination.

• 27:09John Hopkins?

  The fortitude he drew on to endure those high school nights of shivering in the rain, he'll need every ounce of it here, and then some.

• 27:19John Hopkins?

  Ryan surveys his surroundings. It's not promising. He's in an open snow field, exposed to the elements. But below, there is a valley. On the floor of that, perhaps a thousand feet away, there are trees and what looks to be a small lake or a pond.

• 27:38John Hopkins?

  If he can get to water, then he has a chance of staying alive until someone can find him.

• 27:44John Hopkins?

  Though that may be quite some time. He ascended the west side of Pyramid Peak, just as he told his friends and family he would. But his epic fall has shot him all the way over to the east.

• 27:58John Hopkins?

  If and when a search rescue mission begins, it will inevitably concentrate on the opposite side of the mountain. God knows when they might work their way eastwards. So getting to the water is now Ryan's sole objective. The only problem is he can barely move.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  I needed to get down and I didn't have any means of self arresting. You know, I didn't have my ice axes and walking was not an option. So what I did instead was I got my shovel out and I sat on it, kind of like a little sled. And so I kind of just started scooting on my butt down the slope. And it is, it's very slow. I'm sitting on bare metal. My crotch is freezing, sitting on that thing. And I'd have to kind of get off, warm myself up a little bit, get back on.

• 28:51John Hopkins?

  The journey is slow, uncomfortable and not at all straightforward. Descending into the valley, Ryan encounters a 20 foot cliff band, too steep to scoot down on his shovel. The only way you can see of making it is to hop on his one uninjured leg. Gingerly, he rises to his feet, careful to place all his weight on his left side. He starts to hop. But on this slippery downhill terrain, he soon loses his footing and slides down the cliff on a chute of snow.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  I slipped, I fell through that chute, terrible pain in my pelvis, but sure enough, you know, spat out of the bottom.

• 29:36John Hopkins?

  Coming to a stop again on flatter ground. The pain in Ryan's left elbow comes rushing back.

• 29:44John Hopkins?

  He glances down. The joint is once more dislocated.

• 29:50John Hopkins?

  Long breaths, teeth gritted. Here we go again.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Then I just put my elbow back in place. And at this point, I'm at the bottom of the valley. And so I see where that little open water spot is. And I have to crawl through the snow to get there.

• 30:14John Hopkins?

  It's afternoon by the time Ryan reaches the pond. It's a small victory, but he has no time to enjoy the achievement.

• 30:23John Hopkins?

  Exhausted, he now attempts to build himself a refuge from the ever worsening weather.

• 30:29John Hopkins?

  With his one functioning arm, he digs a shelter into the side of a large snow shelf, a long cavity that he can lay in, then pack the snow around himself to create a makeshift wall, a crucial barrier against the buffeting wind.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  I did what I had done on survival nights, which is try and figure out some means of insulation, whatever I could. So I had my little emergency bibby sack. I had my backpack down as kind of a makeshift pad to keep me off the snow. The pond was right next to me, so I really didn't have to get out at all in order to ladle water with my shovel and have something to drink. And so, yeah, that's where I ended up staying for the night.

• 31:12John Hopkins?

  Among his kit that survived the fall is his small stove and a tiny amount of fuel, enough to boil some water.

• 31:22John Hopkins?

  But the fuel doesn't last long. As the dark of night swallows his surroundings, the awaited storm really sweeps in.

• 31:31John Hopkins?

  Ryan can do nothing but lie in his hole in the snow. His body spasms from the cold. The feeling of vulnerability is overwhelming.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  I'm on the wrong side of the mountain. I feel like I can't really move. I don't think, now that I'm dug into this little snow cave, I'm not really creating a big footprint or anything that people could see. You know, even if a rescuer were to come in, if I'm like past hour and a half frozen, they're not going to see me probably. So I was definitely concerned about my odds of being found at that point and still just kind of wrestling with that frustration and myself for getting myself into this situation.

• 32:14John Hopkins?

  Outside, winds of up to 100 miles per hour race through the mountains. The sky continues to bleed flurries of pure white snow.

• 32:24John Hopkins?

  In his makeshift shelter, Ryan endures a horrendous night of shivering, sleepless misery.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Those survival nights, those nights out, you kind of learn, not really to sleep, you get through it. And I don't know if I slept at all. I'm not even thinking in the night. It's like a delirium. It's like a fever dream. Fortunate, honestly, because I needed a little bit of relief from those thoughts. Despair wasn't helping me or serving me at all at that point. And there was nothing I could do but wait the night out.

• 33:03John Hopkins?

  Eventually, the light of morning arrives, and with it, fresh perspective.

• 33:10John Hopkins?

  The worst of the weather has abated. The wind has lost its ferocity. The temperature is creeping up ever so slightly.

• 33:18John Hopkins?

  If Ryan continues on his way through the valley, there is a decent chance he'll eventually come to a nearby road.

• 33:26John Hopkins?

  But that's all immaterial if he can't move.

• 33:30John Hopkins?

  He tries standing, and he's immediately floored by the pain. Immobile, he finds himself at a crossroads.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  I was wondering, should I stay put? At least I'd be close to the mountain where they knew I went missing. If I go wandering off, am I going to make it harder for a rescue party to find me? Are my odds best if I stay put or if I somehow muster up the will to walk? So I kind of had this all day back and forth.

• 34:03John Hopkins?

  The morning elides into afternoon, and Ryan remains incapacitated in his frosty shelter.

• 34:11John Hopkins?

  As the sun begins to dip lower in the sky, a new resolve takes hold.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  It's just the strangest thing what the body can do. Because I had tried to walk several times that day and could not. But that evening, I got out of my cave. I stood up. I was like, oh, I can stand. I started walking a little bit. I could walk. And there really wasn't too much hesitation about it after that. It was, oh, no, I'm putting my stuff in my bag and I'm going.

• 34:46John Hopkins?

  Using his shovel as a cane, Ryan hobbles out into the snow.

• 34:53John Hopkins?

  It's so thick in places that he struggles to make it through. Frequently, he stumbles and ends up face down in the powder or flailing on his back like an upturned turtle. Putting himself upright triggers inevitable pain. On his left side, the slightest knock risks dislocating his elbow again. On his right, any weight placed on his fractured pelvis is excruciating.

• 35:17John Hopkins?

  Ryan drags himself forward at a deathly slow creep. Before he knows it, the light begins to fade once again.

• 35:27John Hopkins?

  He has no option but to build another shelter and hunker down until sunrise.

• 35:33John Hopkins?

  But surroundings here aren't as forgiving as the previous night. The snow is tougher and building a shelter in his current state seems all but impossible.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  I dug this like horrible vertical hole that I just kind of crawled into. I mean, I was like curled up in a ball. My head was kind of sticking out a little bit. My little emergency bivvy sacks with this little foil bag, it was starting to shred. I had all these holes in it. I had the liter and a half of water that I thought would be good for the night. But I was too tired not thinking clearly that I didn't bury it really in the snow, so it froze that night. And, oh, man, I'd remember being so thirsty.

• 36:18John Hopkins?

  The inside of Ryan's backpack has developed some condensation. Desperate, he licks the tiny water droplets in an attempt to take the edge off his intense thirst. The hours grind by. Salvation seems a distant prospect.

• 36:42Speaker 00

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• 37:12Speaker 01

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• 37:45John Hopkins?

  Another night of fitful, feverish quasi-sleep passes. The next morning, Ryan's situation remains desperate. Yet, the breaking dawn brings an unexpected rush of hope.

• 38:00John Hopkins?

  This morning, the sun floods the valley on the eastern side of Pyramid Peak. The birds chirp and sing in the trees. The wind has calmed to a stiff breeze. The wilderness is transformed.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  That was huge. It was warm. So, I got out and I started moving. And, oh man, I was able to move faster. I'd kind of sort of found my rhythm a little bit. And, at that point, I was thinking, oh yeah, I could, I could get out of here. Like, I have a chance.

• 38:37John Hopkins?

  Roughly three to four miles stands between Ryan and the road at the other end of the valley. At the pace his broken body will allow him to travel, that's a full day of grueling effort. With a deep breath, he begins.

• 38:55John Hopkins?

  Trudging through the snow, little by little, Ryan edges deeper into the valley.

• 39:01John Hopkins?

  Then, a jolt of excitement. High above him, a plane flies across the sky. It's the first sign of human life he has seen for three days, before his living nightmare began. Energized, he does his best to make his presence known.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  I was trying to find reflective things to signal with. I was stamping out letters, like a big SOS in the snow. I was considering trying to set fire to some sticks or something. The more things you can do, the better you'll feel. You feel like you actually have some agency in your own survival. But then it was just a question of like, how much time do I spend doing this versus just walking out? You know, because it takes a lot of time to do any of these other things. I didn't really know how I would, you know, cut and gather a bunch of wood, considering the condition of my elbow and my pelvis. And in the end, I thought, well, I'm gonna keep walking.

• 40:00John Hopkins?

  Ryan shuffles along. As the rest of his body is gently warmed by the pale sunshine, the fingers of his right hand remain stubbornly cold within his glove.

• 40:13John Hopkins?

  He lost his other glove, the left one in the fall. On top of that, his dislocated left elbow has rendered that arm unusable. As a consequence, it's Ryan's right hand that has been doing all the shoveling and grappling for the past two days. In all that time, he has kept his right glove on, in an attempt to insulate his hand and protect it from injury. Now he removes the glove, and is horrified to discover his fingers have turned gray. A sure sign of frostbite.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  I didn't even know that that was happening. It was kind of the least of my concerns. But then I was like, oh no, you know, I can't spend another night out here. I might lose, you know, some digits. So I needed to move and get to that road because even if I got to the road but night fell and nobody was on that road, I'd be stuck on that road for another night and it's a long way out. I wanted somebody to find me.

• 41:13John Hopkins?

  Afternoon draws in.

• 41:16John Hopkins?

  Ryan carries on into the valley, moving as fast as he can.

• 41:20John Hopkins?

  All around him, the rugged beauty of Colorado is in full force in this tree-filled valley beneath the towering Rockies. Yet he can take none of it in. His tunnel vision focus is finding the road, still elusive after all these hours of grinding effort.

• 41:39John Hopkins?

  Then, something magical appears. Up ahead, Ryan catches sight of a single word written on a board. It simply says, "Trail."

• 41:54Speaker 03

  It was a sign. It was like a literal sign. You're on the right way. You know? And such, such validation that I was not just wandering off or nobody was gonna find me. At that point, I saw the sign. I could see the valley I came in on. I think I could see the road. And so, I knew I was on the right trajectory. I knew I had a good fighting chance.

• 42:17John Hopkins?

  To make it to the road, he now has to deal with more challenging terrain. He navigates a river by scooting across some logs. It's an unwelcome extra hurdle, but at this point, Ryan is a man possessed.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  I didn't care. I was gonna get out of there. And, kind of the final obstacle was maybe 100 feet vertical up this hill to get to the road. To this point, I'd been going downhill, which is much easier. Now I'm trying to flounder my way uphill.

• 42:46John Hopkins?

  The afternoon is pushing along. With not too much light left in the day, the stakes are high. Another night out here will likely be one too many. His frost-bitten hand can't take much more. Ryan tries to haul himself up the hill with one good arm and one good leg. At any moment, he could slip and fall straight back down. But as it is, his efforts are eventually rewarded.

• 43:12John Hopkins?

  The road is finally within touching distance.

• 43:16John Hopkins?

  And then Ryan spots something even better.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  As I'm very laboriously making my way up this hill, I see some fat tire bikers heading up the road. And it was pretty funny because, you know, there I am, down in the snow, they're on the road and I'm yelling up to them. And I'm just saying, "Help me," you know? "Somebody help me." And they look down, they go, "What?" Like, "Help me." They're like, "Huh?" "Help me." I think, "Oh." I could hear the realization because they knew somebody was missing out there.

• 43:55John Hopkins?

  News about a missing mountain climber has by now spread around the local area.

• 44:00John Hopkins?

  But the bikers are still clearly puzzled to have encountered Ryan here.

• 44:05John Hopkins?

  Ever since he failed to return home on Sunday as anticipated, a search and rescue mission has been underway on the west side of the mountain, the side that Ryan had ascended and where his skis had been found in the snow. The encounter with these bikers on the other side of the mountain on an otherwise deserted road is a marvelous fluke.

• 44:27John Hopkins?

  On seeing him splayed out in the snow, the group burst into action.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Oh, they were, they were a godsend, you know? They jumped off their bikes, they ran down, they held me up the hill. They sat me down, they were feeding me everything they had. One of them's like, "I'm going to get search and rescue right now." He goes ripping down the hill to go get search and rescue. And I am so relieved.

• 44:53John Hopkins?

  And next to no time, a snowmobile arrives. Ryan is carefully placed on the vehicle and taken to a nearby cabin.

• 45:02John Hopkins?

  Warming himself by the fire, he calls his parents. As soon as they'd realized their son was missing, they'd flown a thousand miles from California to Colorado. Not that they could do much beyond waiting and praying for a safe return. Earlier in the day, they'd been told to brace themselves for the worst.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  I was just taken with emotion. I was overjoyed to speak with them and when they said, "We'll be there, you know, in five minutes," I was taken aback. Like, I don't know, it didn't even cross my mind that they would have flown all the way to Colorado. In hindsight, of course, they would be, but I think that just kind of speaks to how detached I was from my family, from my community at the time, that that didn't cross my mind. So, just overjoyed, though, to have them be there.

• 45:55John Hopkins?

  At the hospital, doctors assess Ryan's injuries. They're stunned that he's not sustained more serious damage. Eventually, his pelvis and elbow will both fully heal. The frostbite is also caught just in time. Although the very tip of one finger has to be removed, the nail remains.

• 46:17John Hopkins?

  All in all, he has dodged a hail of bullets. Perhaps it's this sense of good fortune that galvanizes Ryan and helps him towards a speedy recovery. In fact, just a few months later, he's back out in the mountains.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  I never had any sort of PTSD, no residual fear or anything from the experience, and very quickly, I got suckered back into solo climbing. I'm kind of ashamed to say.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  I had another experience, and I felt very close to falling on this solo climb. And I think it was after that that I realized, this needs to change. You know, I really, I can't do this again. It's not fair to everyone else. And I think that, combined with going to my cousin's wedding and seeing my family that summer, and, you know, their relief and their joy of having me around, gave me that final kick I needed to realize, I need to change my approach to the mountains.

• 47:27John Hopkins?

  In time, Ryan moves away from solo mountaineering.

• 47:32John Hopkins?

  In a curious way, his accident allows him to find new climbing partners. As a side effect of the publicity he gains from his extraordinary survival story, he's brought into the climbing community in a way he's never experienced before. Climbing becomes more about connecting with others and less about pushing his own limits.

• 47:52John Hopkins?

  However, the attention he receives because of his close shave on Pyramid Peak isn't entirely positive.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  It followed me around. It still does. I'll never not be that guy who fell off a mountain in Colorado, you know? It revealed a very private part of my life, this over-spiritualization of the mountains, the fact that I was finding so much in my solo mountaineering, which I think reveals how empty the rest of my life was at the time. And to have that just thrown up for the whole world to see and then talk about and then like kind of celebrate was just so bizarre and backwards from how I saw it.

• 48:34John Hopkins?

  Ultimately, Ryan says the experience has taught him a lot about the mountains and even more about himself.

• 48:42John Hopkins?

  Falling 1,500 feet from the top of a 14,000-foot mountain and living to tell the tale transforms his life in the most fundamental of ways.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  I love the mountains. I always will, and I love climbing. But I thought it could fill in parts of my life that were missing. And this accident was my first step in realizing that it couldn't. It has to be a part of my life. I'm never gonna stop climbing, but it's far from everything. And, you know, I'm happy to say that I found the love of my life. I just got married five days ago. And, you know, it was the best day of my life. Better than being found on that road? Yeah, I couldn't be happier now.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Undeniable just how much luck played into all of this. And then the final thing, which is, I wouldn't necessarily just attribute to myself. I think everybody has this, is just that kind of primal will to survive. I never would have thought I could have walked with a broken pelvis. No way. But the body finds a way, you know? It's gotta survive.

• 50:03John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Gillian Lashbrook, who battled through a terrifying human tragedy when she was just a child. In March 1987, Gillian is 16 years old and on a trip to Belgium with her family. At the end of a day's sightseeing, they board the ferry to take them home to England. But catastrophe will intervene. When a critical error leads to the ferry taking on water, a routine crossing turns into a nightmare for the 450 people on board. Suddenly, alone in the North Sea, facing life or death decisions, Gillian has to summon a resilience, courage, and composure far beyond her years.

• 50:48John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now, without waiting a week and without adverts, by signing up to Noiser Plus. Click the link in the episode description to find out more.

• 51:00Speaker 00

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• 51:30Speaker 01

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